ABSTRACT
Jonathan Osborne (this volume) focuses on the goals of science education, arguing that the emphasis of the PISA frameworks is “an education for citizenship” serving to ensure that students will become informed and critical consumers of science and technology. Biddle and Schaft (this volume), in their discussion of science education for those whose communities and lives are being transformed by the Marcellus Shale fracking, examine the practical, pedagogical, and ethical questions surrounding the purpose of education and their relationship with the communities they serve while working to elaborate on some of the ethical dilemmas faced by teachers and students in those communities. What I add to this dialogue is the importance, indeed, the urgency, of ensuring that science literacy includes an understanding of the ethical, as well as epistemic issues relevant to science and technology. I discuss the centrality of values to scientific practice and thereby argue that science education that is to effectively serve as an education for citizenship must include ethical literacy.
